179 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
179 lines
9.0 KiB
Plaintext
---
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title: "The Capitalist Pig-Dog Blog: Income"
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---
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## Payday!
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I get paid at the end of each month, from my job at Bytemark.
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This is a typical employment contract, nothing special, but it bears thinking
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about anyway. Bytemark's a pretty standard for-profit company; people hand over
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cash for hosting, some of that cash is handed over to me in exchange for labour.
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I never see some of the cash nominally handed over to me, because of taxes,
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which go to various things - some of which I like, some of which I don't. More
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on *that* another time.
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=> https://bytemark.co.uk Bytemark
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=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAYE Taxes
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Work is how I pay the bills; bills are how I live. The job ensures that I have
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somewhere to live, food, water, energy, transport... everything. It's possible
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some of this can be changed in the future, and I'll look at that when I get around
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to it, but this is the situation right now.
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Fundamentally, I'm quite happy to accept the Marxist analysis of employment (go
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back and read Das Kapital if you haven't already). The job that I have is pretty
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nice to me, personally, but it's an exploitative contract (see: surplus value),
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which works towards the reproduction of capital, and so ensuring these kinds of
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contracts continue on forever.
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The usual free-market objections to this analysis that I encounter have been
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deeply unconvincing; usually, they revolve around the idea that labour is a free
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market (or it would be, if it weren't for that pesky government), and people are
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free to exchange their labour for wages, or not, as they prefer. Nobody would
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willingly allow themselves to be exploited, so employment cannot be exploitative.
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QED.
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## Compulsion
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Unfortunately, if I don't work, I'm in a bit of a sorry state. Refusing to work
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means no wages. We live in a vaguely civilised society, so if you're out of a
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job there are welfare payments. Of course, you're not eligible for those if you
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refuse to work - and it's generally argued amongst those *not* on welfare
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(and even many who are) that "conditionality" - as the DWP now calls - is a good
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thing.
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The switcharoo here is that I'm actually fine with working in principle - what
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I'm not fine with are the employment terms on offer. But if I don't accept those
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terms, I'm left in the fairly precarious position of needing to find a new way
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to acquire, at a minimum, housing, food, water, energy and transport. If there's
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no sane way for me to do this, the idea that the labour market is a free one is
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ridiculous; a choice of X or death is no choice at all.
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It's worth noting that I could quite conceivably go on doing exactly the same
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job with no complaints, if the background issue of compulsion went away; I am in
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effect complaining, right now, about having no option but to do something I don't
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really mind doing anyway. Other people may hate their jobs, of course, but if I
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weren't being paid to write code, I'd do more of it at home for fun.
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## Alternatives
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So, is there a current (or conceivable) alternative that could render the current
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situation unexploitative? From my point of view, the simplest hack is to make
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the social security net unconditional. This normally takes the form of a
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basic income or negative income tax Without the threat of death if I refuse to
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accept the commonly-offered contract terms in my field, the contract can be freely
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negotiated and entered into (or refused, of course), and free-market logic starts
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to line up with reality. In this model, employers desperately need employees to
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survive; but potential employees can scrape along, more or less, without employers
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for as long as they feel they're being exploited. (In my case, that might not be
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any time at all, of course). It's a complete inversion of the currently-existing
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power relation between employer and employee, and this is for the better, in my
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view. However, it's not happening anytime soon.
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=> http://basicincome2013.eu/ Basic income
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=> http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/NegativeIncomeTax.html Negative income tax
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=> http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-switzerlands-basic-income-initiative-works-2013-11?IR=T
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It's also worth noting that people are supremely good at not noticing that they're
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being exploited; I'm taking a marxist analysis here almost as a given, but it's
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the height of barmy radicalism to a lot of people. I'm fine with that.
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Entrepreneurs in the audience are, at this point, jumping up and down and shouting
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"why not start your own business, or become a contractor?" - and I have given
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both of these options serious thought in the past. Ultimately, however, neither
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option does much - as a contractor, I'd still be subject to extraction of surplus
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value; I'd just be throwing away a whole bunch of protections in employment law.
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Becoming a business owner is identical to being a contractor, if the business is
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a sole trader; and once I employ someone else, I'm just swapping around who
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is the exploiter, and who is exploited. If I don't like the contract style,
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there's absolutely no way I'd want to impose it on someone else, right?
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So far, I've assumed that surplus value (and all the other standard aspects of
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a capitalist business) is actually happening. Could I construct (or join) an
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organisation that lacks these characteristics, and so salve my conscience that
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way? I've not come across anything that would allow me to pay the bills, but
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non-profit, Free or otherwise-worthy software development is generally available
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(reskilling might also be an option, allowing me to change jobs completely, but
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that's not something I can do immediately).
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=> http://socialcoder.org/ non-profit software development
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=> https://gnu.org/ Free (as in freedom) software development
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Joining a worker's cooperative would also do the trick, but I'm not aware of any
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in my current skill set. I've already enquired about the possibility of converting
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Bytemark into one; it's a no-go. Do get in touch if you're running one ;).
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=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative Worker's co-operatives
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Could I start my own up? Quite possibly, but not this year, and probably not next
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year either. Starting a business (of any sort) requires more capital than I have
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at the moment. That's changing, of course, but I'm still quite ambivalent to this
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option; running a worker's co-operative really does come under reskilling, I suppose!
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Evidently, I should have looked harder; there *are* some web-hosting co-operatives
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in business. Eeenteresting.
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=> https://www.co-operativehost.com
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=> https://www.webarchitects.coop
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=> https://web.coop/
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## The nuclear option
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Finally, I could just pack it all in, withdraw from the current market system
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for housing, food, water, energy and transport, and join a long, honourable list
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of people who've taken up homesteading:
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=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homesteading
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All I need is enough land to support me, either individually or as part of a
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commons...
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Back in the day, this was a viable living choice. Hopefully it's entirely obvious
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that it's not the option it used to be - all the land is claimed, owned, parcelled
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out, unavailable. If you want to live off the land, you need to acquire the land
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first. And not just any land - you'll need permission. Really, this option has
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the same problems as "start a worker's co-operative". Prohibitive levels of
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reskilling, and large initial capital requirements. Another one for the future.
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It's worth noting that this state of affairs hasn't come about by chance, and nor
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is it equitable.
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=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts
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=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers
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Land reform is more popular in some areas than others; maybe this can be fixed
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in time.
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=> https://consult.scotland.gov.uk/land-reform-and-tenancy-unit/land-reform-scotland
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## Full circle
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That's a lot of words, and not all of them are particularly encouraging. Would I
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want to grub in the dirt for food every day of the week, even if it were an
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option? Would a worker's co-operative be a success in any of the fields I could
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work in? Am I brave enough to switch jobs *right*now*? Only possibly!
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Leaving that last one aside, is there anything at all that I can do to improve
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matters here? The fundamental issue is the imbalance of power between employee
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and employer; the traditional remedy for that has been unionisation.
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there is no union shop at work, nor do I suspect there ever will be; but I can
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always join a union as an individual - so I'll join Prospect.
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=> https://prospect.org.uk
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I don't expect it to change any aspect of my current employee-employer relationship
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in the short to medium term, but if nothing else, maybe the dues will help somewhere
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else; and unions really need a shot in the arm. They really aren't the mass
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movements they used to be, and they're not going to improve if someone as in
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favour of them as myself can justify not joining one, are they?
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=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute Wapping dispute
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=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike 1926 UK general strike
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=> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week Three-day week
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So, membership form sent. That makes this post worthwhile all by itself! I'm only
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7 years late in joining... and hey, it's May Day!
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=> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day May Day
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